Referee Guidelines

Privacy of unpublished results An unpublished manuscript is a privileged document. Please protect it from any form of exploitation. Do not cite a manuscript or refer to the work it describes before it has been published and do not use the information that it contains for the advancement of your own research or in discussion with colleagues.

Do not discuss the manuscript with its authors unless permission has been granted by the Editor. Although it may seem natural and reasonable to discuss points of difficulty or disagreement directly with the author, especially if you are generally in favour of publication and do not mind revealing your identity, this practice is prohibited because the other referee(s) and the Editor may have different opinions, and the author may be misled by having ´cleared things up´ with the referee who contacted him/her directly.

Timeframe Reviews should be completed within 21 days (3 weeks). If you know that you cannot finish the review within that time, please contact the Editorial Assistant immediately. In addition, if you believe that you cannot judge a given article impartially through contact with the authors or a possible conflict of interest, please return it immediately with an explanation.

Grammatical editing You are not requested to correct deficiencies of style or mistakes in grammar, but any help you can give in clarifying meaning will be appreciated (track changes can expedite the editing process; a MS Word file, in addition to the PDF, is available in ScholarOne by accessing the Manuscript Files tab). The copy-editing staff employed by Invertebrate Systematics will edit each accepted manuscript. It is their function to polish and correct the grammar, syntax, and spelling and to enforce the editorial style of the journal. However, be on the lookout for errors that the copyeditors (who are not necessarily specialists in the field) might miss. Examples are misspellings of locations, use of outmoded terminology, misspelled or misidentified scientific names of organisms, inappropriate scientific jargon and incorrect nomenclature.

What happens next? When you open ScholarOne Manuscripts to submit your report, you will be offered some questions with a check box. The answers to these are for the use of the Editor, and are not conveyed directly to the authors. The most important are the first and last: the quality of the manuscript and your recommendation.

Keep a copy of the review in your files. If you have recommended ´major revision´, the revised manuscript may be returned to you for further comment.